Your source for the latest technology information of interest to community banks across America. Subscribe to our weekly e-mail newsletter and stay on top of the latest technology trends in Hardware, Software, ATMs, Wireless, Online Banking, Marketing, Security, Internet Access and Call Centers.

March 12, 2018

Intel announced a new Optane 800P SSD, which uses Intel's Optane technology to speed up app loading times and reduce latency. However, the high performance of the Optane 800P comes at a price - it starts at $129 for only 58GB of storage. Optane is a combination of hardware and software that Intel uses to reduce latency and cache essential data.

VMware has expanded its portfolio of cloud tools to help organizations improve the manageability of their public cloud and on-premises environments. At the same time, VMware announced the first global expansion of VMware Cloud on AWS, its joint hybrid cloud service with Amazon Web Services. VMware Cloud Services are designed to provide a consistent set of tools – for visibility, operations, automation, security and governance – across multiple public cloud and on-premises environments.

Microsoft’s on-premise Azure cloud platform, Azure Stack, has now been embedded in real-world, core business environments with early adopters validating business use cases that require secured and host environments. This article looks at a few current uses of Azure Stack.

There was a 10 percent increase in the number of payment cards compromised at US ATMs and merchants in 2017, Silicon Valley analytic software firm FICO reported. The number of compromised card readers at ATMs, restaurants and merchants rose 8 percent in 2017. FICO's data comes from the FICO Card Alert Service, which monitors hundreds of thousands of ATMs and other readers in the US. These figures cover only card fraud occurring at physical devices, not online card fraud.

McAfee Labs detected over 16 million mobile malware infestations in the third quarter of 2017, with new threats emerging around the globe. The report highlighted the fact that a global spike in banking Trojans has occurred, targeting account holders of large multinational banks as well as small FIs.

The author contends that FIs need a complete mobile-first orientation. This means building a suite of mobile apps to make banking quicker, easier and frictionless for users. He also believes that this mobile-first approach to banking should include both branch transformation and digital transformation.

Check Point Software Technologies announced the CloudGuard product family to help protect organizations from Gen V cyber attacks on cloud applications and infrastructure. The company is also introducing CloudGuard SaaS to help protect against cyber attacks on SaaS applications. According to Check Point research, half of all breaches of enterprise SaaS applications are the result of account hijacks.

A new TransUnion analysis found that the growth in outstanding balances of suspected synthetic fraud in the credit card market is slowing in large part due to recently focused efforts by issuers to prevent such instances of fraud. Synthetic fraud involves fraudsters creating fictitious identities with the intent to open fraudulent accounts.

The author states that effective marketing is all about having the right tools to get the job done better and more efficiently. To help with this huge task, she offers a few suggestions for content marketing tools.

Three major instant-payment schemes have already launched this year within a month of each other. Plus, a recent report by FIS identified 25 active real-time payment programs around the world and a further 11 programs under development.

Cloud-based business communications company RingCentral is looking to go head to head with WebEx and GoToMeeting with its own standalone conferencing and team collaboration product. The product is called RingCentral Meetings, and according to the company, it integrates web meetings, video conferencing, and team messaging in a single product.

When Cisco announced its intent-based networking (IBN) strategy last summer, CEO Chuck Robbins called it the company’s biggest announcement in years. IBN architectures use a combination of software and hardware to control network infrastructure. It allows users to express their desired state of the network – infrastructure configurations, security polices, etc. – and IBN automatically implements and maintains that state.

Consumer frustration runs high with call centers, and perhaps so does the risk of exposing sensitive data. A (perhaps surprising) 70 percent of call centers require callers to (literally) read information out loud to the agent – a litany of information that includes sensitive strings of numbers spanning birthdates, Social Security numbers and the like. This article delves into some possible solutions to this security risk.

The author states that AI is a game-changing solution for customer experience (CX), holding the key to greater customer insights and enabling real-time decision making. He provides some tips to help your contact center prepare to implement AI.